LETTER: Wisconsin election review flawed, unnecessary

To the editor:

I am frustrated with the review of the 2020 election in Wisconsin. The excuse is to regain public trust in our elections. The county and municipal clerks I know take their responsibility for conducting fair and transparent elections by the rules seriously. Except for hardcore partisans I don’t believe there is concern for the conduct of the election. Accusations have already been investigated and debunked through legitimate election audits and court decisions.

Why are taxpayers funding this duplicative, biased, politically motivated, and incompetent review? Speaker Robin Vos and legislative leadership chose to spend $676,000 of taxpayer money on this gambit. At least the recently concluded “audit” in Arizona was paid for by those who wanted it—not by taxpayers.

Michael Gableman, who Vos chose to lead this investigation, has demonstrated he does not approach the review with an open mind, but in word and deed has demonstrated he is extremely partisan and given to acceptance of baseless conspiracy theories. This leads me to conclude this review is less a legitimate quest for knowledge than a political stunt.

The only reasons I see for this charade are to feed false narratives of election irregularities which further threaten our democracy and to attempt to gain political advantage on the part of the majority party leadership, on the public’s dime.

I urge all rank-and-file members of the legislature to work on the leadership to cancel Gableman’s contract and end this travesty. I further call on all citizens to contact their legislators to demand an immediate end to this flawed, unnecessary review.

Ken Harter, Oconto Falls